Physics student at Leeds University. I built a Rapman that lives in the QIX department, which we want to use to print mounts for optics equipment, (these consist mainly of flat shaped blocks, i.e. with z axis is the critical dimension).
And working with polymer physicists to test some material properties of FFM/FDM'ed material, with the aim of creating build rules. So that for example the type of infill would be changed depending on whether the part was under compression, torque, tension etc.
These could then be automated within skeinforge.